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Perhaps by now you’ve seen the viral video of Carey Price, the Montreal Canadiens goaltender.

In the footage Price is seen ungracefully absorbing a puck to the family jewels. The damage is done by an innocuous-looking wrist shot from teammate Lars Eller in warmups for Wednesday’s game against the Boston Bruins. Price, after he takes the hit, sprawls on his stomach in apparent agony. After slowly gathering himself, he leaves the ice in a door-slamming huff.

It’s hilarious stuff if your comedic bull’s-eye resides in the nether regions, or if you’re a goaltender who can relate.

“I was chuckling when I saw it,” Maple Leafs netminder Ben Scrivens was saying this week, “because I’ve been there.”

For those of us who have not been there, Price’s dance to the edge of reproductive viability was worth more than a few hardy-hars. It also begged a serious question: When will goalie jock straps be big enough to end such misery?

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Goalie jocks, if you don’t get a regular look at them, are massive. If the protective cups worn by players are the equipment equivalent of a Tim Hortons medium, the models donned by the men who patrol the crease are a 7-Eleven Super Big Gulp. In the dressing room, both player and goalie jocks are known as “cans,” but you could easily mistake one of the goalie versions for a codpiece that fell off the Michelin Man.

Think of a giant yield sign made of high density foam and plastic that may or may not be lined with Kevlar, the material in bullet-proof vests. Now think of that contraption being affixed to your loins. That’s what it’s like to wear a goalie jock.

Still, many pro goalies have taken to the habit of double-cupping. Scrivens is among a number of NHLers who wears a regular player’s supporter underneath his humongous goalie job. Other designs—and there are many—have two cups built into the same piece of equipment.

Like most pieces of high-tech, jumbo-sized goalie equipment, modern cans mostly do a great job of protecting the man they encase.

Said Cody Franson, the Leafs defenceman, speaking of the now-infamous Price warmup video: “That’s usually one of the safest places to hit a goalie.”

Shooting low, even at the privates, sure beats zinging a slapper off your own goaltender’s facemask—an unwritten no-no. Still, even with the advances in equipment and careful teammates, goaltenders can be vulnerable.

“You can take 100 shots and 95 won’t hurt you,” said James Reimer, the Leafs goalie. “But five of them will.”

Duncan McFarlane, a reviewer for the equipment website Modsquadhockey.com, offered his theory for what happened to Price, who has been known to wear a Vaughn brand double-cup number.

“The problem with a lot of these double cups is that if they’re not fitted exactly right, or if you catch it at the wrong time—when the inner cup is floating out away from the body—you end up getting this mass of plastic driven back into your pelvis by the puck,” McFarlane said. “Which is excruciatingly painful. I’d guess that’s probably what happened to (Price).”

Having one’s nether bell rung, as McFarlane put it, is no laughing matter. And yet, given the tenor of the average hockey dressing room, it has long been a laughing matter, even in eras in which goalie and player jocks were nearly the same size.

Leafs broadcaster Jim Ralph was a 1980s pro goaltender who glimpses a picture of the slimline equipment of his day and wonders aloud, “Was I even wearing a jock?”

“But it happened even when I was playing—the goalie’s lying there in pain, or puking in the crease, and everyone else is standing around laughing,” Ralph said. “They’re asking if you’re OK, but they’re not waiting for the answer. Everyone’s reaction is to think it’s the funniest thing that ever happened.”

Jamie McLennan, the former NHL goalie and TSN analyst, said the pain of a well-placed puck’s impact can “paralyze your body.” After taking a career’s worth of crotch shots—“You’d get at least one a year”—the 41-year-old McLennan often joked with friends that he wasn’t likely to be biologically able to father a child. So he was pleasantly surprised when his wife, Stephanie, delivered their daughter, Dilyn, a couple of months ago.

“I can reproduce, I guess—but I never thought I’d be able to,” McLennan said with a laugh.

If McLennan had thought the worst about the grimness that could be inflicted by a low-flying puck, perhaps it’s because he witnessed some rare gruesomeness. It was more than a decade ago that McLennan’s backup with the St. Louis Blues was hurt by a warmup shot not unlike the one Price endured this week.

McLennan said he remembers various Blues complaining that Rich Parent had left the crease on that day in 1999; as the No. 2, Parent was expected to handle the majority of the pre-game work. But it turned out a slapshot had shattered Parent’s protective cup. Popular myth has it that the blast came off the stick of legendary heat-bringer Al MacInnis; reports of the day indicate the shooter was Scott Pellerin. Parent tried to tough it out; he changed cans and returned to the warmup. He even sat on the bench for the first period before the throbbing became too much. Medical examination later revealed he had ruptured a testicle in two places.

Parent would return to action less than a month later. And yes, he would subsequently father a child. Whether by coincidence or not, McFarlane said it wasn’t long afterward that manufacturer Koho introduced the largest and bulkiest jock anyone had ever seen.

“It (had) an extra inch of padding, two huge ventral shields, and a gigantic plastic triangle covering the entire groin over the top,” McFarlane said. “You couldn’t move in that thing to save your life, let alone a shot.”

More than a decade later, the designs continue to evolve. But much to the wince-inducing chagrin of those who stand in front of 100-m.p.h. slapshots, the protection still isn’t foolproof.

“What it does is it protects you from being out for weeks,” Scrivens said. “It doesn’t protect you from momentarily being doubled over and being like, ‘Ohhhhhh!’ ”

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